Monday, November 19, 2007

November 17 Rally Against NT "Intervention"

Karranjal John Hartley, Coordinator of EarthSong Consultancy and adviser to the SA Branch of the Construction, Forestry, Mining and Energy Union (CFMEU), delievered the following speech at a rally against the Federal Government's Northern Territory "intervention" on Saturday 17 November 2007.

The speech is reproduced below:

I firstly acknowledge the Ancestors and continuing culture of the Kaurna People in whose country we gather.

Brothers and Sisters

My name is Karranjal John Hartley I am Ku Ku Yalanji and my mothers people are from the rain forest country of far North Queensland

I work in the area of Family violence I want to be clear today that Family Violence and in particular child abuse in all its forms is both culturally abhorrent and unacceptable.

Family violence affects each and every one of us regardless of race, country, class or gender.

Allow me to acknowledge all those surviving the trauma of such abuses and the many brave Aboriginal Women and Men who have for decades been at the forefront of raising these issues within our communities.

Brothers and Sisters

We gather here today to rally support for the Aboriginal communities of the Northern Territory and call for the immediate repeal of the NT Emergency Response Legislation.

We are here to demand that governments of all persuasions listen to, consult, negotiate and support Aboriginal peoples of the Northern Territory in addressing issues within their communities consistent with the Little Children Are Sacred report.

I would like to spend my brief time here today to talk on the need for us to break through the veneer that John Howard and Mal Brough are acting for the “good of our children.

It is important that we break through the manufactured perception created by both John Howard and Mal Brough that the extreme racist measures they have devised are needed to effectively tackle child abuse in Aboriginal communities that their measures are in fact, in the interest of children and for the ultimate good of Aboriginal people.

It is important we look beneath the Howard / Brough veneer, so that we may bring to the light of day the hidden mainstreaming and racist agenda that lay buried within the 500 plus pages of the “so-called “ Northern Territory emergency response legislation.

Howard and Brough argue any means to an end and that if you are not with them - you are therefore against them and by some warped definition either an abuser of children or at minimum prepared to accept child abuse as a functional way of life.

This of course is absurd. But what it does do quite effectively is inhibit people from speaking out for fear of being branded a pedophile. I am here today to dispel that fearI vehemently disagree with both Howard and Brough and let me repeat; child abuse, in any form, in any culture is abhorrent and absolutely unacceptable

Brothers and Sisters

In non - Aboriginal urban mainstream communities where child abuse has been substantiated on the basis of clear evidence the child is removed to ensure the safety and future of that child - who would argue with that?

But is the whole neighborhood then held responsible?

Are all your houses, land and community assets then confiscated?

Are all your wages, unemployment or pension payments then quarantined?

Are you then told with what is left of your money were, when, why, how and with whom you can spend it with?

Are your businesses taken over and placed into the hands of Government managers?

Are all your workplaces shut down?

Brothers and Sisters

If it were simply a case of more policing - a matter of establishing law and order as is often heard. Why is child abuse on the increase in mainstream society?

Why does a child die approximately every three-days through child abuse with barely a headline?

Why is pornography openly for sale at our local news- agents and corner shops?

Why is Canberra known as the porn capital of Australia?

Brothers and Sisters

Ask yourself how many children have been removed under protective orders in targeted Northern Territory Aboriginal Communities since the intervention?

Ask yourself how many charges have been laid against offenders?

Brothers and Sisters

What is happening in Northern Territory Aboriginal communities is a return to failed ideologically driven social experiments of the very recent past.

What is happening in our name is unfair, unjust, un-Australian and unworkable.

Brothers and Sisters

On each occasion the racial discrimination act has been suspended in this country, it has been to the direct detriment of Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people

This intervention is racist to the extreme and we must demand the immediate repeal of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation. These back to the future polices never worked before and they will not work now.

Black Yellow Red or White we can only do this together. Let us throw whatever resources we may have, whatever they may be to bring about the abolition of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation.

Lets us hold up the Little Children Are Sacred report as a first step in ensuring the safety and future not only for the children of the Northern Territory, but for all children everywhere.

Thank you for listening.

Adelaide, South Australia. Parliament House Steps National Day of ActionFor the abolishment of the Northern Territory Emergency Response Legislation.17th November 2007.

1 comment:

Anonymous
said...

After discussing Hitler the Mohawk nation news shows that the psychological warfare against the Aboriginal people in Australia fits a deliberate certain pattern. as "sexual deviants" and "child molesters" are dragged out of their communities and gaoled. Will they ever be allowed to re-enter and fully reintegrate with their communities and keep their "connection to the land"or kept on a 'register 'of sexual deviants for social exclusion ? An article in Mohawk news 24.6 07 ,says and it all sounds pretty familiar tactics . MNN - AUSSIES IMPOSE MARTIAL LAW ON ABORGINES - MNN. June 24, 2007. In the 1920's there was a failed artist who was bitter about his lack of success in Vienna Austria. He had visions of gaining control over the whole human race. He came up with a scheme and put Iit into a book called "Main Kampf"....

"Canada is using a new version of this old weapon. We are being branded as sexual perverts or pedophiles or deviants of some sort. By doing this government control mechanisms are being set in place. The social networks such as the Children's Aid Society, police and even the military are becoming involved. We have been seeing the military in the outskirts of Six Nations during the reclamation of our land. The social services are being given more and more power to abduct, grab and remove our children from their families based on the claim that this is "in the best interests of the children".... ......The public is told that huge amounts are being paid out for having been molested in the past. Sociologists and doctors propagate a myth that anyone who has been molested also becomes a molester.

At the same time they have branded the entire Indigenous population as molesters. Why? Because they are giving money for abuse that happened in the past to our children by church run residential schools. Once Indigenous declare they have been molested and divulge their past, they are put on a computer list where they are branded as "deviants" and encouraged not to have any children. This is really "Genocide Plan B". They will use any pretext to go into Indigenous communities and take away children from parents because that community "has been contaminated by what [what they did to us] happened in the residential schools"!

There is so much assault on Indigenous cultures in Canada. Some indigenous people feel it's a big accomplishment just to keep our children. In Australia the Howard government is going to implement martial law on the Aborigines to confiscate their lands and property. They also plan to attack those in vulnerable positions like the welfare recipients. The Australians are many steps ahead of Canada in implementing this kind of scheme.